As unicef ambassador, princess Mathilde will preside a belgian mission to Mali, from 20th to 23rd February 2005.
The mission focusses on development aid, medical help and education , especially for women and children.
She will also meet leaders of local tribes.

It's her third solo mission abroad (after the UN top, and her mission in Niger).

Princess Mathilde and Unicef Belgium make an effort to help the project to send 1.850 “schoolbags” to Congo, Niger and Romania.

“I know the feeling”, Mathilde replies to a Unicef cooperator who composes schoolbags. ”When I ask Elisabeth what she would like to take to school with her, there’s no end to her answer” Yesterday morning Mathilde visited the impressive stock centre in Danish Copenhagen. The general impression of her there: “A lady who can deal with the practical side of the business”.

The visit started with an, according to Danish customs, rather unusual welcome. The limousine that picked up Mathilde at the airport, was accompanied by a roaring police escort that dropped her off right in front of the entrance of the Unicef stock depot in the harbour of Copenhagen. “The Danish royal family tends to be a bit more discreet nowadays,” says translator Dirk Evers, A Flemish man who’s been living in Copenhagen for the past 7 years. “Queen Margrethe is barely escorted by an anonymous escort car. And you often see Danish prince Joachim walking through town on his own. His driver hangs around in the neighbourhood.”

The gigantic stock depot of Unicef goods in the harbour was a gift of the Danish government. “The grounds are as big as 3 football fields. From here 700 different kinds of goods leave for 160 different countries”, logistic manager Soren Hansen explains. “Whenever a humanitarian disaster takes place somewhere in the world, the first goods leave within 48 hours. Hansen received a barrage of practical questions from the princess about the way the way the logistic worldcentre works.

Attention for the schoolbags

Princess Mathilde visited Niger in February and saw with her own eyes that education there was, like in many other African countries, still a privilege for the happy few. She had a lot of attention for the schoolbags that Unicef composes. “They contain all the material needed to educate a group of 80 children, from pencils and manuals to notebooks”, Cristine Hoier explained to the princess. This British woman developed the bags at the time of the Rwanda crisis, after thousands of children, running from violence, had ended up in a refugee camp. “With the help of the schoolbags they still managed to learn how to read and calculate. It also has a big psychological aspect. Education gives children quite a big feeling of stability,” Hoier continues.

A few weeks ago Hoier travelled to Congo to measure the contents of the school- and playbags on the grounds. “You better don’t ask children what they would like to have, because you’ll get the craziest propositions” Mathilde nods “Our Elisabeth can’t stop either when I ask her what she would like to take with her”.

Princess Mathilde and Unicef Belgium have put their shoulder to the wheel of the project “Education, my right”, at the end of October. “Enough funds now have to be raised to finance 1.850 schoolbags for Congo, Niger and Romania” says Unicef spokesperson Philippe Henon. Nearly 400 schoolbags have been financed.

It must constantly smell of flowers in the castle of Laken. Not only are the greenhouses full of them, Mathilde also receives flowers every time she performs a duty (from the institution she's visiting and from people in the streets who've come to greet her). She's received hundreds and hundreds of bouquets over these past 5 years, from a single rose, over small bouquets to really big ones. And she always seems genuinly happy with them. Well who woudn't be